Tempting as Sin

by Rosalind James

  She had to stop and try to slow her breathing down. “Boy, this is hard. You’re the first person besides Paige I’ve told this to. Paige and a therapist. And I wish you’d say something. I’m…”

  “Shaking,” he said. “I see it. But I’m listening. I’m hearing. Maybe you also stayed because of that baby you didn’t have. I think maybe so.”

  She couldn’t look at him. Her throat had closed, and she wanted to run from this, but it was here, and it always would be. There was no more running. “Yeah,” she said. “He did say he wanted one at the beginning, before we were married, when I got pregnant. His family was happy. There was always some truth in anything he said. Twisted around, but it made it hard to reject what he said. It was never all a lie. I lost the baby, and I couldn’t get pregnant again, and they couldn’t figure out why, and his family was disappointed. And I felt…” She stopped again, then said it. “Defective.”

  She knew why she was remembering it. Because she’d seen Antonio again, and everything had come back, the same as before. The words that cut into her skin and laid her open. The look in his eyes, like she disgusted him. The burning shame of lying there, hurting, knowing he was going to kick her, and that everybody was watching. Like she hadn’t gotten anywhere at all. Like she was still stuck in that life, in that person, in that self.

  Trapped.

  Remembering, too, that first, worst night, when her perfect-on-the-surface new life had started to fall apart. Sitting there, alone in the enormous, perfectly decorated, absolutely-not-quite-hers house on the beach in Malibu, and seeing the first streaks of blood. Leaning her head against the eggshell-white bathroom wall and thinking, Breathe. Think. What now? Calling the doctor’s answering service, then waiting. Watching TV, and not seeing it. Trying to think of something—anything—she could do, and knowing there was nothing.

  She had no cramps. Surely there would be cramps if it were a miscarriage. Surely, then, it was all right, and the life she’d imagined was going to happen. She was being too dramatic again, that was all.

  Antonio had been shooting in Costa Rica, and when she’d called, it had gone to voicemail. Another hour, then trying again, and the same result. Out of cell phone range a lot of the time, he’d told her when he’d left. It had been years before she’d thought to wonder whether that had actually been true.

  The doctor had finally called back, had told her to come in the next morning. “Unless the bleeding gets worse or you develop severe cramping,” he’d said, “in which case you should have somebody bring you into the ER. If you’re miscarrying, though, we won’t be able to stop it. Up to twenty-five percent of pregnancies do fail, unfortunately. That’s the body’s way of dealing with a chromosomal abnormality.” He’d sounded so casual, so calm, and she’d thought again, Nothing you can do. Just wait.

  She hadn’t slept much that night, and when she finally did, her dreams were dark and jagged. Trying to get to the ship so she could sail to England, but her suitcase kept opening up, spilling out all her clothes, and she kept trying to put them back inside, and failing. She was in a taxi, but it was taking too long, because the airport was suddenly hundreds of miles away. She didn’t have her passport, and she had to go home to get it, and she’d miss the boat. Again and again, the same endless loop, until she’d woken and everything was the same.

  A little blood. No cramps. So it would be all right.

  Calm down.

  When the clock finally inched around to nine, she drove herself to the doctor’s office for a scan. A scan that would surely show that she was fine, and so was the baby. Spotting could be normal, too.

  Overdramatic. Needy. Fragile.

  Lying on the exam table, peering at the monitor, trying to see. The seconds ticking by, and nothing but gray shadows. No tiny spot pulsing white like she’d seen online, and then the doctor saying it.

  She got up onto the table pregnant. She got down knowing that she wasn’t sharing her body after all. It was just her here. Just her, all alone. The numbness had progressed up from the soles of her feet, and the tears had felt hot and scratchy behind her eyes, the opposite of healing.

  She’d walked across to the hospital for the D&C, her mind floating above her, gone away. Disassociation. Seeing the nurses on their break, striding out of the hospital’s revolving doors, talking and laughing, and the brunette whose scrubs were printed with teddy bears holding balloons. She must work on the pediatric ward, she’d thought. Babies and kids in the hospital. That would be so much worse than this. This happens every day. A chromosomal abnormality.

  The doctor talking to her afterwards, and how she’d hated him for his matter-of-factness, then shoved the hatred down, because that was surely irrational, too. He was just being professional.

  “It never developed into an embryo,” he said. “Just a blighted ovum. When it didn’t develop, your body eventually stopped producing hormones.”

  The slap in the face that had been, saying that you couldn’t even grieve, because it had never really been there. No little tadpole with an oversized head and its fingers starting to form, the way you’d imagined. A blighted ovum. A dead egg that hadn’t been anybody after all.

  “I lost the baby,” she told Rafe. The ache was still there, even after all these years. “It happens all the time, and it was still the worst day of my life until then, probably because there was so much I wasn’t looking at, so much more under the surface that was wrong. Or maybe just that it’s always a hard thing. Saying goodbye to your dream baby.”

  “What about Paige?” he asked. “Where was she?”

  “On the other side of the world, working on a cruise ship. I could have called my mom, but I didn’t want her to worry. I told her the next day, when I was calmer. I wanted to take care of her for a change, you see, and finally, I could. It was my new life. I could send her money so she could quit working so much. I wanted to buy her a house, but I never did get to do that. By the time I was divorced and wasn’t getting an allowance, when I could have spent the money, she was gone.”

  “An allowance?” He looked outraged, the same way Paige had been when she’d found out.

  “Sounds bad, doesn’t it?” she said. “But it was Antonio’s money. He was right about that. He’d earned it.”

  “And you were his wife. He was making millions per picture by then, and he didn’t want his wife to buy her mother a house? That’s not normal, Lily. It’s not right.”

  “I know,” she tried to explain. “Looking back now, it’s so obvious. But back then, that night, that whole time—I didn’t want to be the fragile one anymore. My life had changed, and it hadn’t changed at all. Antonio told me I hadn’t done anything wrong. Probably. I could try again, he said, and make sure I did everything right. So you see—I hadn’t done anything wrong, except that clearly, I had. The whole thing started us out all backwards. And then I couldn’t get pregnant again. I couldn’t understand it. I had the tests, and so did he. He said he did, at least. Obviously, that wasn’t true. He lies very well.”

  “When actually,” Rafe said, “he had syphilis.”

  “No,” she said. “Or yes. First, though, he had a vasectomy.”

  Lily looked exhausted, which she surely was. Rafe should have made her something else for dinner. A smoothie, maybe. He wished he’d done that. He also wished he’d hit Antonio much harder.

  “What?” he asked. “How would that even happen?”

  “So weird, right? Turns out he decided, somewhere in there, that he didn’t want kids. ‘Not when you were so crazy the first time,’ he said. ‘And it made your breasts look disgusting.’ That was nice, huh? That wasn’t a good evening, and yet it was. It took me where I needed to go. Surgical strike.”

  The top of his head was going to blow off. Again. She sounded brittle tonight, far from her usual gentle calm. “Why wouldn’t he tell you?” he asked. “That makes no sense. Why not have that conversation?”

  She pulled her mass of hair back with one hand, her habitual gesture.
“His family, for one thing. I realized that later. He’s Italian. How much easier to say I was infertile, and to have me believe it? I’m not a good actress. And weirdly—I think he wanted to stay married to me. It’s a strange dance, an abusive relationship. He got somebody to take it out on when life didn’t go his way. They say they can’t control themselves, that you push them past their limits, but you notice later that they don’t lash out like that at their boss. They save it for you. So, yeah, they can control themselves. They just don’t.”

  He breathed. “So. Syphilis.”

  “Yes. When the doctor told me about it? I waited for Antonio to come home, and then I asked him. I’d always been so scared to make waves—I mean, really scared—and finally, I wasn’t. I knew what he’d say, what he’d do, and it didn’t matter anymore. I said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me so I could have been treated? If I’d been pregnant, it could have killed the baby. It could have caused birth defects. It could have been so bad. If you were going to cheat on me, why wouldn’t you protect me at least that much? At least do that? It would be your baby, too.’ And he said, ‘Haven’t you figured it out by now? There was never going to be a baby.’ That’s when he told me about the vasectomy. And somehow…”

  She stopped. He wanted to know this, and he absolutely didn’t. “That was it,” she said. “The turning point. It wasn’t just about me anymore. It was about that dream baby I’d hoped for, the one I’d mourned every month, because it never happened again. My little girl. My little boy. My baby. I could forgive him for everything else, maybe. I can’t forgive that. It was like everything shifted, and I saw things the other way around, just for a moment, like a flash. That maybe it wasn’t me. That he’d been willing to do something that extreme, and to hide it, to keep me that much more off-balance. I had to ask—what kind of person does that? And once I left, it started to shift some more, especially once I told Paige. It’s been a journey, though, to get here. It’s been a long, long road. I’ve had to own my part, too, and that’s been hard.”

  “How did Paige not know?” He tried to keep it neutral, calm, but Lily stiffened anyway. “When she knew so much tonight?”

  “She says I was jumbled,” Lily said. “Fuzzy. She was worried, but she couldn’t tell. I’d gone away, she says. It’s hard to explain. They call it ‘erosion,’ what happens to your self, and it’s true. Like parts of you are gradually sliding off, and you’re less and less. And this isn’t my favorite subject, by the way.”

  He laughed out of sheer surprise. Time to move on. The rest of it, they’d get to. The doe had dropped her guard. He needed to keep her here with him, and to let her know she didn’t have to run anymore.

  Was there part of him that said, Still got issues? Maybe there was. He ignored it. It was what she’d said. She called his name. “Got it,” he said. “But thanks for sharing. I hated him already. I just hate him more now.”

  “He’s extraordinarily handsome,” Lily said. “Even more so now. Just looking at him would take my breath away. Which is shallow, but there you go, I wasn’t looking deep enough. That was me all the way. Looking for Prince Charming on his horse. He’s charming, and he looks like somebody who’s caring and sensitive. He acts like it, too, at first. He’s an actor, and he’s a good one. You look in those dark eyes and think you see it all there, like you’re looking through the window to his soul. But when you knock on the door, there’s nobody home. I know that, and that’s why he’s the past. I’ve stopped sliding away. I’m here now. I have a few bruises again, but I’m all here.” She finally took another bite of chicken, put her ice pack back on her face, and said, “And do you mind if we watch your movie? You can close your eyes when you come on screen, but that’s so much more than enough Antonio for one night. For one life. Right now, all I want is to watch you beat up bad guys. Again.”

  “I’m on screen all the time in this one,” he said. “It’s all me, for better or worse. But we can do that. We’ll relax. No worries.”

  Bailey rode past the beach, past the park, and up the path along the creek. Nobody would think to look for her here. Social workers always came in cars, and so did cops, even if they were detectives and weren’t wearing uniforms.

  She wished she had Chuck. Chuck was company, and he made her feel not-scared. She wished he hadn’t had his balls cut off, so he could run. If somebody was there when she went back to her grandma’s, maybe Chuck would have bitten them, if she had him. Probably not, but he could bark at them, and she could get away.

  She didn’t have him, though, so she went to a spot she’d found last week, where there was a log that made a bench, dropped her bike, and pulled her book out of the backpack. It was very interesting, and she’d only read part of it so far.

  It was quiet here, except for the water in the creek, which was a peaceful sound, and the buzz from the bushes. It wasn’t wasps, just bees, and bees were good and didn’t really want to sting you unless you bothered them, so that was a peaceful sound, too. A lady walked by with a dog, but nobody else did. She hunched her legs up onto the log, laid the book on her knees, and started to read.

  “Hi.”

  She almost dropped the book. It wasn’t a grownup, though. It was a girl. Bailey recognized her from school, even though she wasn’t in her class. Her shiny black hair only went to her shoulders, and she had bangs. She was kind of short, and as skinny as her.

  “Hi,” Bailey said. The girl had a soccer ball, and now, she flipped it up with her foot so it landed in her hands.

  “You’re Bailey, right?” the girl said. “You were in Ms. Swan’s class. I was in Ms. Peterson’s. But you’re new.”

  “Yeah.” The girl looked nice, not like she’d come over to be mean. She didn’t have that sort of pinched-up face that some girls got when they talked to you. “Bailey Blue Johnson.”

  “That’s a cool name.” The girl sat down on the bench with her soccer ball between her feet and said, “My name’s Hermione Wu. I’m new, too. At least, I came last year, at the beginning of third grade. Wu’s a Chinese name. Hermione is like in Harry Potter.”

  “I know,” Bailey said. “I mean, I heard your name before. I used to see you playing soccer at recess. I didn’t know about the Chinese part, though. I’ve never read Harry Potter.”

  “Really? You should read it.” Hermione stuck her legs out in front of her, but kept one heel on the soccer ball. “It’s great. My mom read me the first book when I was in second grade, but I’ve read two more now, and I’m on Book Four. It takes a long time, because they’re super long. Hermione’s my favorite character. She’s really smart. I like reading, but I like soccer the best. Do you do soccer?”

  “No,” Bailey said.

  “I didn’t think you did,” Hermione said. “At least, I’ve never seen you at any of the games. You should sign up this year. You’re good at football, but there aren’t very many teams for that, and it’s almost all boys. Soccer’s really fun, and there are lots of girls. You get to play in the fall and in the spring, too, not just one time. If you signed up, we could practice. I practice all the time, except in the winter. Then I play basketball. That’s cool, too.”

  Bailey didn’t want to say that being in soccer cost money, so she didn’t say anything, just looked down at her book again.

  “What are you reading?” Hermione asked.

  Bailey held the book up. The title was on the cover in big white letters. Animal Battles! “It’s not really about animal battles,” she explained. “Not real ones. It’s about who would win if they had a battle.”

  “Oh,” Hermione said. “Cool.”

  “Yeah,” Bailey said, “especially because they don’t tell you right away. They ask you, and then they give you facts about the animals, and you have to think about it, and then they tell you. Like if it’s a tiger and a lion, which one would win?”

  Hermione thought about it. “The lion,” she said, “if it’s two males. They’re about the same size, but they’re both hunters, and a lion has a mane. Animals at
tack each others’ necks, so a lion’s mane would protect him.”

  “That’s what I thought, too,” Bailey said. “But it’s not right, because tigers are heavier, and they hunt alone. They have to be faster, because they have to kill their prey by themselves, and they’re more dangerous in captivity, because they don’t have a group like lions do, so they’re kind of meaner. The Romans used to have animal fights in olden days, and the tigers won, so you actually do know, which is cool. Even though I don’t think there should be animal fights. Lions and tigers are both endangered.”

  “Oh,” Hermione said. “Those are good clues.”

  “Yeah,” Bailey said. “I’m reading about a crocodile versus a great white shark now.”

  “Crocodile,” Hermione said. “It has, like, armor.”

  “But a shark has lots of rows of teeth,” Bailey said. “Also, a crocodile kills its prey by taking it down for a death roll and drowning it. A shark can’t drown.”

  “Yes!” Hermione sat up straighter and started rolling the soccer ball under both her feet. “It can! A shark has to keep swimming to get oxygen in its gills, like breathing. And I think a crocodile would be meaner. Its teeth would be stronger, too, if it has to hold onto its prey.”

  “That’s what this guy I know says,” Bailey said. “Clay. He’s sort of, like, a friend of mine, even though he’s old. He knows all about Australian animals. Crocodiles are Australian, and Australia has tons of sharks, too. He got bitten by a shark once. He showed me the scar. But the shark left him alone after that, he said, like it bit him by mistake. A crocodile wouldn’t leave you alone. So maybe I say crocodile, too.”

  “So what does the book say?” Hermione asked. “What’s the answer?”